Pythium revelers

[Endoperez]

28 Revelers (20% NB random): 2 Revelers with N2
26 Skopets (20% B random): 7 Skopets with B1

Heh, I just realised why I was getting such high unrest in my capital as Bogarus... I forgot Skopets generate unrest!

[JimMorrison]

Strange that these 20% picks are getting such universally low numbers.

I very often use mages that have a 10% pick, and over time I feel I consistently average about 15% of those mages getting the extra pick. That is to say, in most games it's closer to 20% on a 10% pick, then there is the random run here or there with almost none getting the extra pick.

[Endoperez]

JimMorrison said:
Strange that these 20% picks are getting such universally low numbers.

7/26 = 0.27
I don't see where you find the "universally low numbers".

[Endoperez]

Another batch:
24 Revelers, 4 randoms (3x Blood, 1x Nature)
24 Skopets, 3 randoms


I'll run at least one more batch. I reversed the scales from my first test, and now revelers have twice the randoms they used to have while Skopets are down to half of what they got before.

[PvK]

Well within standard deviation, no?

[JimMorrison]

PvK said:
Well within standard deviation, no?

Indeed. The smaller samples show larger swings of course, and the larger the sample, the more homogenized the picks begin to look.


As far as the RNG goes, I'm not totally sure I agree that there is some fundamental flaw beyond it being an RNG. I mean, there are only 5 different types of Tarts, right? And you got 6 of one type in a string, which is relatively unlikely. But have you ever played Yahtzee? Ever been dealt a straight flush or 4 of a kind in poker? If you saw that sort of blatant streaks very commonly, I am sure that it would be indicative of a problem.

Really though, random is different from chaos. It would be interesting if there was a chaos generator rather than a random generator, and it looked at what you had gotten, and increased the probabilities on a geometrically curved bias skewed towards what has been lacking. Unfortunately, doing so would render ultra high prot/MR/def to be even more powerful than it already is, because rather than having a 16% chance to roll another 6 after your first one, the probability would artificially drop. Bear in mind, your odds of rolling a second 6 are NOT 2.8%, they are in fact still 16%. This is why the general rule of thumb will always be - short term streaks, long term statistical averages.

[Karlem]

Regarding random generator seed and such.

I think that it's decided when you create a game, why? I've seen this multiple times:

1.- Create a game, play a couple of turns
2.- Back up the game.
3.- Host it. Random events X & Y.
4-. Use back up and host it with no changes. Same random events X & Y.

Repeat point 4 a couple of times and that should prove this, isn't it?

[thejeff]

True, the seed probably is decided when you create a game, but that has no bearing on whether it's a good psuedo random generator or not.

Rerun a turn with the same orders, everything should come out the same.

Rerun a turn with even one slight change (that requires a different random roll) everything after that should be different.

[sector24]

Two important things to note:
1) The N2 reveler is garbage due to Epoptes, all that matters is the blood random, so it's really a 10% chance to get what you want.

2) The average is not as important as the worst case scenario, because you really only need 1 reveler (2 would be nice but is unnecessary). When the worst case is 50 or 100 recruits before you get a blood random, that sucks.

I think this is an unusually big deal for LA Pythium because the satyr you summon is extremely useful. Not just as an assassin, but as an assassin with leadership 40 that can summon maenads when there's nothing better to do. An extremely versatile commander all for a single blood slave. They are head and shoulders above an indy commander, and cheaper as well (both initial cost and upkeep). To not take advantage of this is foolish, but at the same time to try and take advantage of this is also foolish.

[MaxWilson]

JimMorrison said:
As far as the RNG goes, I'm not totally sure I agree that there is some fundamental flaw beyond it being an RNG. *snip* Really though, random is different from chaos. It would be interesting if there was a chaos generator rather than a random generator, and it looked at what you had gotten, and increased the probabilities on a geometrically curved bias skewed towards what has been lacking.

A high-quality pseudorandom number generator will produce numbers in the observation domain that are statistically uncorrelated with each other. That's about as good as you can do with stateful generators. It would not surprise me if Dominions had a weak pseudorandom number generator (JK is unlikely to have written one himself). I don't call that a bug, but it does mean I'm skeptical about certain kinds of empirical testing. Instead of one person recruiting 1000 Revelers and counting the random picks, I'm more inclined to trust the average of 10 people each recruiting 100 Revelers (in separate games) because the Revelers picked all on one machine may be correlated.

-Max